The film adaptation of the hugely popular video game series, Assassin’s Creed has been circling development for nearly four years at this point. With the name of Michael Fassbender attached to the project for most of that time, updates have been relatively scarce for such an auspicious undertaking. However, according to the star, who remains oddly vague on even basic details of his character, the delays have been necessary.
In an interview with ComingSoon, the in-demand actor fielded a critical question about the long-gestating Assassin’s Creed project in which he will star. However, for Fassbender, the premise of said question, referring to the project’s lengthy layover is not valid. As Fassbender states:
You say it’s a long time, but what I’ve found – it’s all new to me, but starting to develop scripts and work on them, they take time. It just takes time to get a good story together and we really want to do it right. It’s exciting. It’s going to start this year, we’ll be filming in September.
It seems that for Fassbender, one person’s "delay" is another’s "process," since his status with the project seems as firm as ever, despite the fact that it’s been three years since he joined. However, the idea that 20th Century Fox has been opting not to rush the film, letting the creative juices flow behind-the-scenes, might be a positive sign showing that they are well aware of the established notoriety that quick cash-in, video game-based movies have garnered.
In fact, Fassbender seems to further address the subjectivity of the adaptation process. Commenting in a way that might be purposefully cheeky on the idea that he would play the game's protagonist, Desmond Miles, Fassbender said:
You don’t know that. Don’t listen to what they tell you, that’s the first rule.
The video game storyline of Assassin’s Creed centers on a contemporary bartender named Desmond Miles, who, as it turns out has some important intel located in his very genes, due to his familial connections to a long line of ancient assassins. Corporate monolith, Abstergo Industries are able to access pieces of this genetic info by way of a machine called the Animus, which allows Desmond to directly relive memories of his cutthroat kin from ancient days past. (Serving as the crux of the gameplay.) Abstergo’s ultimate (possibly sinister) goal is to use clues from Desmond’s genetic memories to locate a powerful item called the Pieces of Eden.
Interestingly enough, for all the candor Fassbender expressed regarding the status of the shoot, he was also notably coy about even the most general aspects of how the film would the game's storyline. However, it could be the case that Fassbender still simply doesn’t know the specifics of the script, which has passed through the hands of scribes like Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Michael Lesslie. In fact, the actor acknowledges the challenges of piecing together a story from source material that he calls, "so dense."
Michael Fassbender’s confirmation of a September shoot for Assassin’s Creed also complements the recent development citing the casting addition of Marion Cotillard. Interestingly enough, with director, Justin Kurzel at the helm, the film will serve as a quick reunion turnover for this year’s upcoming rendition of Macbeth in which Cotillard, the Oscar-winning actress of La Vie en Rose plays Lady Macbeth to Fassbender’s titular Shakespearean Scottish Duke. At the moment, Assassin's Creed is penciled in to stealthily slay ancient sentries in slow motion on December 21, 2016.
